


Dream a Little Dream

by malchanceux



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Rising (2007)
Genre: But also character rebirth, Cannibalism, Canonical Character Death, Child Death, Childhood Trauma, Dream interpretation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Prompt Fill, Psychological Trauma, Reincarnation, Wow, many cannibal, much feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-14 23:43:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1283008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malchanceux/pseuds/malchanceux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a prompt that asked for Will as Mischa's reincarnation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops. I fell and accidentally fanfic'd what I wasn't supposed to be working on. Again. Sorry. *smiles sheepishly*
> 
> Prompt link is at the bottom.

            At night, Will dreams.

            He dreams of Garret Jacobs Hobbs, so full and bursting with love for his daughter that he could not _bear_ the idea of her absence. He dreams of ripping men and woman apart, relives the crimes of killers past—of every case he’s solved since he was a New Orleans cop. He dreams of a haunting ravenstag, creeping through his conscious on light hoof with a gentle, chilling breeze; the scent of blood permeating the air.

            But there are other dreams too, ones he has never told another soul about, even when he was just a boy and did not quite grasp the _oddness_ of their existence. Those nights Will’s head was filled with golden tresses, curled so sweetly and bouncing about an angel’s face as she ran and played and laughed.

            Those nights he did not wake up screaming.

            He woke up _sobbing._

 

 

 

 

            “You seem tired today, Will,” Hannibal says, not unkindly and yet clinical; ever so hard to read. It was strange, to the special agent, to see sincerity and not know where it lay, when others were always so easy to see through, “More so than usual. Nightmares?”

            Lost in thought—lost in visions of delicate hands and a small body—Will shakes his head before he can catch himself. He can’t take the gesture back, but he could change the subject. Doctor Lecter was a man who did not drop a bone, easily or _ever_ , but Will could only speak of his own volition. His last remaining safe place at times, his head was a fortress for his disturbing associations and… _her._ No one could reach them, could _see_ them, without his willing it so.

            And yet—

            “What do you make of… reoccurring dreams, Doctor Lecter?”

            A twitch at the brow and slight shift of the head are the only tells Will gets of Hannibal’s surprise, the only break in the marble mask the older man wore so well. A spark of satisfaction swelled in Will’s chest. He liked when he uprooted the psychiatrist, took him out of the bounds of where he foresaw things progressing. It didn’t happen often, but when it did Will couldn’t help the small curl at the corner of his lips.

            “That certainly depends on the dream,” a wisp of eye contact before blue-grey rested safely on dark red paisley, “And the person.”

            Will stood from his usual seat with a quiet huff, walked about the first floor bookshelves with a nervous energy he could never seem to fully quell. Hannibal sat back in his own chair as he studied the scruffy special agent, interests piqued.

            “Many doctors in our field think reoccurring dreams are a way for our subconscious to communicate with us, solve issues we cannot or simply refuse to face in the light of day,” the doctor stood, slowly circling the other, making sure to give the younger man a wide berth as to not make him feel pressured or boxed in, “Tell me, Will, what is your subconscious trying to tell you behind closed eyes?”

            A short laugh died at the end of Will’s tongue, the sound biting and sarcastic.

            “My subconscious tells me _a lot.”_

            “And this particular dream?”

            “It’s not—it’s not just one,” there’s a hesitance in Will’s voice, but the cynicism is gone. Now the empath’s vulnerability laid itself bare for the doctor to see, “There are dozens, like a series, or snapshots of someone’s life. They all play out the same way, always follow the same script, but they never… _play_ in the same order. It’s like opening up a book and reading the chapters at random.”

            “You say like someone’s life, are these dreams not of you?”

            “No—I mean yes. I don’t know. Probably not?”

            Hannibal allows a pause in their exchange, knowing that if he pushes for too much too soon the special agent would be swift to shut himself behind his forts. The silence is heavy, filled with Will idly picking through the doctor’s expansive collection. He pulls out a book on a whim, needing something to do with his hands and an excuse to not look the psychiatrist in the eyes.

            “In these dreams,” Hannibal says gently, “what does this person do?”

            “It, um. It’s a little girl,” Will mumbles, as though that distinction made a difference, as though out of everything that would leave his mouth that fact _mattered_ and he needed Hannibal to see that it did, “She plays by herself most of the time. She’ll visit a lake to feed ducks, or make angels in the snow, or—sometimes she plays in a castle.”

            A swell of emotion twists in Hannibal’s chest, warms him and hurts him all the same. He clamps down on his internal reactions to the younger man’s words. It had been some timesince he’d last thought of his precious Mischa, but Will’s dreams spoke so close to home…

            He pushed such thoughts away, locked them in his memory palace where they _belonged_.

            The empath went on, oblivious to what his words had stirred in his unofficial psychiatrist, shoving the book back in its place so he could continue to aimlessly pace.

            “There are dreams that are just of her laughing, and I’ll see flashes of her face, or her hair, and that’s it. I’ll wake up and—but sometimes they’re not so… calm. Those dreams always seem to have some sort of film over them, casting everything into a sunset haze. They’re not _unpleasant._ I don’t enjoy them, but they’re not like—like the other ones with her…”

            Will stops at the back of his chair, fingers tracing over the soft leather absently. Hannibal watched as the slighter man seemed to wilt, and he could see all too well _why._ The visions that plagued Will in the dead of night were _so much_ like the memories the doctor reminisced during the day.

            “The other dreams are darker,” the empath says, his voice dropping into almost a whisper—scared to speak the words out loud, “Shadows cling to everything and I always wake up _freezing_ and _hungry.”_

            Frozen in place by his desk, Hannibal’s fists clench at the memory of a weak body, desperate for nourishment and chilled to the bone. He remembers how much everything _hurt_ and how his little sister _begged_ him to make it stop _—_

            “There are these men,” Will’s voice breaks, his eyes are damp, “And they take her hands as if to play—”

            Will cuts himself off, huffs in frustration and rubs tired hands over an exhausted face, trying to hide the tears that had formed for a little girl he _could not have known_.

            The conversation has clearly overwhelmed him _(has overwhelmed Hannibal in a way he hasn’t felt in years)_ and the doctor lets the subject drop. He shuts down his reactions to Will’s _dreams_ and draws himself straight, presents himself as he is meant to be seen once more. It is easy to hide that he had felt anything passed what a detached spectator should, as the empath has drawn himself protectively within his own head, his responses and conversation stunted and shallow for the short remainder of their session.

            Will leaves with his shoulders slumped, his body mimicking his mind as he physically draws in on himself. He will be agitated the remainder of the evening, go to bed upset and sleep restlessly. Usually Hannibal would part with soothing words, but today they stick to the insides of his chest, refuse to come out. He manages a polite farewell just barely before settling behind his desk with a glass of wine, face gloomy and mind racing.

            Hannibal doesn’t know how long he sits there, staring at the seat Will had occupied so many times, thinking inevitably of Mischa and his patient’s dreams and how they are so impossibly similar to the doctor’s own _memories._

 _W_ _hen you have eliminated the impossible_ , Hannibal thinks with a hint of hysteria. His memory palace is a wreck of soft moments with Mischa and their harsh life after their parent’s death, all desperate for his full attention, all screaming for him to _look_ and see what _Will saw._ Amongst all the noise his sister stares at him, her expression one of a child’s troubled innocence, as though they were both young again and Hannibal had just denied her a sweet before dinner—

 _“Enough,”_ he says to himself sternly, voice slightly raised as he stood abruptly from his seat, nearly knocking over the wine. His mind settled then, quieted, but the image of his sister did not fade. He caught her gaze—blue like the sky on a stormy day—and thought:

_They have the same eyes._

 

 

 

 

            That night Will dreams.

            He does not have visions of Garret Jacob Hobbs or Abigail. He does not revisit old crime scenes, old cases, or old criminals. Will Graham does not see the hauntingly beautiful ravenstag that so often watches over his disturbing associations with a chilled air and the scent of death clutching to its ebony feathers.

            He only wishes he had.

            Instead Will dreams of golden tresses, curled so sweetly around an angel’s face as she runs and laughs and plays.

            That night he does not wake up screaming. He wakes up _sobbing_ , the name of his unofficial psychiatrist and friend escaping chapped lips, bloody memories of freezing snow and painful hunger and desperate men burned into the back of his eyelids.

            That night Will remembers a name.

             _Mischa._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This idea just doesn't seem to want to leave me be. *squints* Not like I don't have a handful of other fics I need to finish or finals to study for or overdue papers to write and turn in or anything...

          “Is that a birthmark, Will?” Hannibal asks, gesturing towards the younger man’s right palm. There was a faint yet distinct crescent shape curling from his thumb to just under his index finger. It was stark white, thin, and slightly raised, barely noticeable amongst the soft, pink flesh of the special agent’s hand. But then, Hannibal had known to look for it.

          “This?” Will asks, inspecting his palm, “Yeah, I guess. It’s been there since I can remember. Could be a scar; might have hurt myself when I was little maybe.”

          “Maybe,” the doctor agrees, and the subject drops. But Hannibal cannot help but let his gaze linger on the mark, a clear memory tickling at the back of his conscious.

_A little girl playing in the woods, screeching happily as she chased and lost the small, harmless creatures of the brush. She trips, catches herself but scraps her hand across a sharp branch. There are tears, blood, and an older brother who comes to the rescue and kisses everything all better._

          It was small things like this that the doctor had been looking for and _finding_ for the past few weeks, after their abandoned discussion about a little girl Will watched in his dreams. Hannibal does not speak a word to Will, does not say a thing as evidence pointing to the impossible grow and pile higher on top of each other faster than the doctor can disprove or explain away.

 

 

          The subject of Will’s _reoccurring dreams_ never comes back up in their “unofficial” therapy sessions again. It hangs heavy in the air sometimes, when neither are pondering the thoughts and motives behind killers, like the thick, sticky feel of a humid day.

          Palpable, uncomfortable, _unavoidable_.

          The empath ignores something that he does not understand, could not hope to unravel on his own, and Hannibal—

          For the first time in many years, Hannibal Lecter finds himself at a complete loss of what to do.

 

 

 

 

_There is a shriek before desperate gurgles, blood gushing from a crude cut at the throat and tears spilling like an afterthought. There is snow and snow and snow all around, barren trees and the echoes of life that once was standing like skeletal sentinels in a silent forest. There is despair in the air, and a sliver of morbid hope quickly taking its place._

_There are two starving soldiers in the woods, and a sick little girl. A sad son of dead nobility and a ruthless traitor general shivering hungry in a cabin not even a mile out._

_Two hungry soldiers return to the cabin with a steaming, meaty broth._

_The sad little boy does not know better._

_Until he does._

 

 

 

          “Hypnosis, Doctor? Really?” Will says with a scoff, and because he can’t resist: “Are you going to make me cluck like a chicken?”

          “If you think it would be helpful…” Hannibal says with a smirk. Will glares, but there is no real heat to it. There hasn’t been since their first outing together in the field, their bond forged through victim’s blood and Will’s desperate need for someone to understand him and _accept him_ , “Your nightmares have darkened, your sleepwalking has only become more frequent—you need rest, Will, and I believe hypnotherapy would be highly beneficial for you.”

          “I—I don’t think it would work on me. People in my head… I just don’t feel comfortable.”

          “But it would not be ‘people’, Will, just me,” Hannibal tips his head, eyes searching to make contact with the special agent’s, “Do you trust me?”

          A beat of silence; stormy blue studying muddy red.

          “Yes.”

          Hannibal smiles, walks to his usual chair.

          “Then please, take a seat. We will go through a series of relaxation exercises before we begin…”

 

 

 

_The baby teeth at the bottom of his bowl steal the words from the little boy’s mouth. All sound seems to dry up behind cracked lips, shriveling like dying flowers beneath the taste of his sister’s flesh on his tongue._

_Hannibal Lecter is ten years old when he has his first taste of human meat, and the things inside him that made him human—compassion, mercy, empathy—_ die _._

 

 

 

          The one thing Hannibal can never seem to escape is the taste. It was rich on his starving lips; it was mana sent from God himself.

          Hannibal does not dream, but sometimes when he wakes, the subtle hint of watery soup slithers down the back of his throat, teasing with ripe flavors. Intellectually, during such mornings, the good doctor will think how preposterous it is, considering how terrible the broth must have been given how it was prepared. Certainly it was just a starving boy’s hunger giving the food such a supple taste.

          Those mornings Hannibal’s stomach will twist in disgust, and the hint of bile will linger at the base of his tongue for the remainder of the day, inescapable no matter how many _pigs_ he eats to will it gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I have not read or seen Hannibal Rising, so this is just me bsing the Lecter origin story.

**Author's Note:**

> Link to the original prompt: http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/3819.html?thread=6502891&posted=1#cmt6506219
> 
> Someone else should go fill this. S'good idea. This should be a trope as big as the "secret Omega living as a Beta" thing is in this fandom. xD


End file.
